Surviving The Assault on Private Sector Careers in America

Hidden NEW Job Openings

Unless you’re living in a cave, you know that every major company in the United States (and probably the world) has announced plans for massive lay-offs.

What you may not realize is that these lay-offs almost always create new job openings in the company that’s doing the slashing. When I first witnessed this, I was dumbfounded, but then I saw it happen over and over again and I realized it was not only true, but actually a pretty good idea.

Here’s what happens. A company figures it needs to cut 750 jobs to get its cost in line with decreased sales expectations. It also knows that the remaining employees will be demoralized and their productivity will wane as they gossip about further cuts and/or start looking for another job.

Most executives secretly believe that the bottom 10-15% of their employees are actually deadwood. In other words, the company would be better off without them. So instead of laying off 750 employees, they lay off 800 (or more) and then actually create 50+ new job openings.

This strategy enables them to reallocate headcount by “giving” the new job openings to top performing departments and perhaps ask underperforming units to take deeper cuts.

It also sends a couple of important messages to the remaining workforce. First, it says “this company is not dead, in fact we’re actually growing in a strategic way.” Second, the arrival of positive thinking new employees shakes up the whiners and gets them thinking about the future again. After all, if a smart new guy or gal is excited about joining your company, perhaps you should be grateful to have a job!

Of course, simply knowing that there are millions of secret job openings out there doesn’t do you much good if you can’t find them. To make matters worse, all of those people who were laid off are now flooding every company’s understaffed Personnel Department with resumes.

The trick is to find the coveted “back door” to these hidden job openings.

Enter Jobfox.com

I was doing some research to find job openings that appear during the recession and I found a great article detailing fields that they believe will grow as a result of President Obama’s stimulus package.

After reading the article, I “followed the food chain” to the author and discovered a new company called Job Fox that connects people with potential employers using a unique model. They call it the Mutual Suitability SystemTM and they actually have a patent pending on the design.

The company was founded by Rob McGovern who also founded careerbuilder.com. He has a great background and that leads me to believe

Rob McGovern

that jobfox.com might actually work!

If you’re looking for a job and you want to hunt down some of those newly created hidden job opportunities, give jobfox.com a try.

Oh yeah, here’s the story on Obama driven jobs…

The Obama Effect: New Job Trends to Watch in 2009

Jobfox, the Internet’s fastest-growing job site, predicts the job sectors most likely to grow as a result of Obama administration’s economic initiatives.

McLean, Va. (December 17, 2008)- Jobfox, the Internet’s fastest-growing career site, predicts the top Obama-inspired new job trends to watch in 2009. The list includes the job sectors and key professions that are most likely to grow as a result of President-elect Barack Obama’s economic stimulus policies.

The Obama administration has said it will “hit the ground running” with what experts project to be a $700 billion job stimulus package. The new administration’s goals are to create or save 2.5 million jobs over the next two years.

According to Jobfox, the most wanted new jobs, listed by major Obama initiatives, will include:

“Epic changes are ahead throughout the professional landscape,” said Rob McGovern, CEO of Jobfox. “It’s just like 1991, when we didn’t know the Internet was coming. New job titles will emerge, many of which haven’t been invented yet. Savvy professionals will be prepared to take advantage of new opportunities.”